Umm, hello. Let me introduce you to these magical little headphones. Put them on, because you catch recovery through the ears. But before you can do that, you’ll have to bring that nasty little mouth that runs like a freight train inside your head to a screeching halt, and (no disrespect intended) but you’ll have to zip it for a second.

We are one. That’s pretty much the bottom line. That means you, me, the fat Wall Street guy stuffing his bedroom with prostitutes and his face with foie gras, the cashier at the check out at the Quickie Chick…yup, we are all connected. And that my friend is a FACT whether we like it or not. (Pain is required. Suffering is optional.)

I did not like this fact when I arrived in A.A. Actually, I vehemently rejected the concept back then (and for many years after) so if you’re still in that space…I’m different, I’m separate, you don’t understand me, I don’t give an eff about you, peace and love. It’s all good. When we know better, we do better.

But if you stick around here on the planet long enough, you may just kind of start to get this sneaking suspicion that we are inter-related and inter-dependent (uhhh…and yes, science and medicine both agree.) Sometimes the pain of that feeling overwhelms me. In fact, I often think the knowingness of that kept me using for years. Because there is a lot of suffering on the planet. And I can’t really do much about a lot of it. The Earth itself suffers from our abuse. I am a part of that. And in many ways, powerless over it.

So sometimes my response to that feeling of powerlessness is to deny that suffering exists. That looks like getting really really super busy and staying that way. It looks like a Louis Vuitton purse or some CHANNEL sunglasses (and by the way, no qualms here with either LV or CHANNEL.) It can look like eating and eating and eating stuffing my feelings, stuffing my voice, stuffing my fear that I am small and insignificant, and alone, capable of nothing. It can look like me curled up in a ball in my closet with the door closed screaming “I don’t give an EFF!”

For many years, my response was not denial, but instead, the yeah buts…

For example: the animal is already dead and wrapped in cellophane…why shouldn’t I eat it.

And this isn’t about meat eaters vs./vegetarians. Disclosure: I just made ceviche. “Of course I contradict myself, I am large.” That’s Walt Whitman.

It’s about….awareness I guess. And awareness is a journey. That means I can eat ceviche. My journey began in sobriety, and if I could wish you anything from your sobriety (other than not waking up next to a stranger covered in your own puke) it would be awareness. Being present.

Being present began with NO MATTER WHAT we don’t drink and use. NO MATTER WHAT. I don’t know why, but that NO MATTER WHAT stuck with me. It was like they (all the people I was definitely NOT inter-connected with) were daring me to stay sober. No matter what (for an addict or alcoholic) will get you right into the present moment.

No matter what?????????? Seriously? Now what?

There is NOTHING like pain for waking you up. But I didn’t think it would last so long.

When I was newly sober, the pain was like: I’m going to take a tire iron to your face and then let’s go get you some stitches.

Now it’s kind of a slow dull ache that just comes in the middle of shimmering green leaves, warm gentle breezes, the smell of my daughter’s hair. It’s this realization that I have expanded. The internal me, the space inside, is wider, deeper, more fertile and more barren. And I’m human, and I respond to the strangeness of it awkwardly a lot of the time. Last week I was busy being really busy, and I thought, I’m not going to write this freaking blog anymore. Then somebody liked a post or sent a comment or something and it connected me back to that space. The heart space. The put on your headphones and listen space.

I guess I keep looking for a place in my sobriety where I can get comfortable. You know what kind of comfort I’m talking about right? I’m talking about an SUV of comfort. I’m talking about a big ass MOTORHOME of comfort. I’m talking about the foie gras of comfort, the mow my lawn for $32 kind of comfort.

Except somewhere, my ‘comfort’ started getting a little itsy bit uncomfortable. And now when I see an email in my inbox with a quote for mowing my 1/3 acre of lawn for 32 bucks, I can’t help but think about the poor person (or more likely, persons) who are going to do that back-breaking work busting their butts for 2-3 hours for like $3 an hour.

I just don’t want to have that kind of relationship with another human being anymore. I just don’t. I don’t want to look at you and think I know who you are before you open your mouth. People have suffered so much to be here, alive, taking up breathing room on the planet. It’s so important to respect one another’s journeys.

I don’t want to decide who I’m going to be right this minute and stick to it. YUCK! I reject that. If it’s a mistake, so what. We’re having this magical magical experience here…god’s little science experiments. I need you. Nothing happens in a vacuum.

And we need to listen. To each other, to the breath of the planet around us, to ourselves. To our center.

I do not mean this in any negative way. But generally, I don’t look to my husband (or any man) for significant spiritual direction. This is not to say that we don’t share a spiritual journey. We absolutely do. It’s just that largely because I am a woman, I usually look to women to show me how to do this thing. It’s kind of the same reason why my ‘woman doctor’ is a woman. I just figure she probably knows (at an intuitive level) what’s going with that department and I like intuitive thinking. I like to know that the person I’m taking direction from is working with a little something extra in the inspiration department.

So we’ve been struggling a little with our kids. If you have kids and you haven’t gotten to ages 7 & 10 yet, may I advise you to hibernate between ages 4 and 6 so you have the strength. It’s freaking exhausting. And I don’t mean exhausting as in: I’ve run carpool, dropped off the playdate, washed folded and sorted 17 loads of laundry. I mean: an argument every 13 seconds, complex negotiations just to determine what shoes will be worn to school and a melt down at the slightest hint of parental authority being exercised. I guess this is where it just gets a little harder. If you care about being a parent. And we do.

Anywhoo…I haven’t been quite myself with the whole evolution of WWIII in the house. My normal upbeat and positive ways (hee hee) have given way to a bit of a sullen and sulky complexion. It’s almost like I don’t even want to get out of bed in the morning sometimes. Mainly because I don’t want to try to recreate some elaborate hairstyle from American Idol and then be lambasted because I haven’t done it right.

So JM recently printed off this quote and left it on my desk. It’s from the Tao of Parenting I think (let me know if you want the exact source or title and I’ll email it to you.) It goes like this:

Dealing with difficult children is like watching a garden grow. Resist the temptation to pull up the plants to check on the roots.

In difficult times, children may thrive on conflict. If you take the bait, the battle rages. Instead, step back, breathe deeply, relax and stay at your center. Battles require two parties. One fighting alone soon tires.

I love this for so many reasons. It’s basically reminding me of that AA slogan, we cease fighting everyone and everything. But like many AA slogans, I sometimes need the expanded version to put it into practice. The idea that what I’m faced with in this difficult relationship (and really, we could insert anything where it says children) is resisting the temptation to pull up the plant to check the roots…to ruin all my hard work just to reassure myself that the roots are there.

So it’s kind of back to the ebb and flow of things…right? I have to relax, breathe, and most important stay at (or find) my center. From the center, I know all is well. I am loved. What I’m doing is enough. God’s got it.

If all you did was just look for things to appreciate, you would live a joyous and spectacular life. If there was nothing else that you ever came to understand other than just look for things to appreciate, it’s the only tool you would ever need to predominantly hook you up with who you really are.

We live in a winner’s world. It belongs to those who triumph and overcome. Survival of the fittest often means that he who claws the deepest gets and he who doesn’t, doesn’t.

JM came home after working the Superbowl (for those of you who are newer to the blog, my husband is a production designer) and was telling me about what it was like standing in the tunnel as the Patriots came off the field after losing to the New York Giants.

…They were so young, and they just looked, you know, devastated. It sucks that so often when someone wins, someone elses dream is dying, right there, in slow motion.

Defeat is hard to stomach, but winning can be deceiving. I ran across this quote from Rilke in a post on Elephant Journal and thought it made for a nice Sunday morning inspiration.

Winning does not tempt that man

For this is how he grows: By being defeated, decisively,

By constantly greater things.

~ Rilke

You may not be growing if you haven’t been at least a little uncomfortable anytime in your recent memory. Just a thought.

Imagine for a moment that you are a drop of water. It’s wonderful to be like water and there is no known form of life that can exist without you…the single powerful drop; the molecule that binds all that we know to the planet.

But a single drop of water is not enough to continue survival as we know it. While it is exquisite and perfect in and of itself, a much larger body of water is necessary.

So imagine now that you are a single drop of water and that you have surrendered your magnificence to a larger power, the ocean. As you merge with the ocean, you now have access to all of its properties. The power, wisdom, consistency, completeness, of the larger body. By finding a home here, you discover where you belong–you, that perfect little single molecule–you belong. And nothing can keep you from what is yours. It is waiting for you. All you have to do is surrender to the ocean. Be one among many drops of the water. Work in harmony and peace with the rest of your kind. This is only one possibility in a world of possibilities. Flow…

Sometimes what we need is a new pair of glasses, and there’s a fantastic book that you’ll bump into (I hope) if you stick around the program long enough, by just that name.

Chuck C. has said, “Every alcoholic I’ve ever known is a perfectionist, an idealist. It is this drive for excellence that …makes us set goals for ourselves that we can’t attain. We’re forever disappointed in our own performance and we demand more of those around us than they can put out. It’s a beautiful attribute, but it’s a killer until we learn how to live with it.”

A killer, he says!

Well, back in 1958, Chuck was in a little bit of a financial mess. He had a vacant plant costing him something like $13,000 a week to keep the doors open on , and he was waking up every day in a cold sweat thinking, I’ve gotta get some business in there. He was juggling 5 or 6 different deals to fill the plant and all of them looked like any one would come through and fix the problem, but…as luck would have it, it was not to be.

In the book (New Pair of Glasses, by Chuck Chamberlain) he writes that he had it all figured out. “I’d done all their (the business guys) thinking, all their planning, everything. I’d gotten the deal together for them. It was mine.”

And then they said no. No deal.

“Everything had just evaporated right in front of my eyes.”

You know that feeling? That is the WORST feeling.

“Twelve years before, I’d started making 12-step calls in business; helping people do things they needed to have done because I wanted to. And here was this pinch and I had to go get some business, and I went to get it and everything evaporated.”

(This is that moment when you’ve tried to power your way through a situation. You’ve set it all up, managed it, orchestrated everyone’s part, and it STILL hasn’t turned out as you expected.)

So he goes on to say that he just gives the (failing) business back to his partner and decides to just go back to making 12-step business calls (helping people do the things they needed to have done because he wants to)

and then he says…

“Something happens that you (the reader) knows is impossible!”

A guy ( a business friend) calls me in my office and says, “Charley, I have the feeling you’re in trouble and I have written a check to you for $50,000. You don’t sign a note, you don’t pay interest, we’ll apply it to our next deal we have. Come and get it if you need it.”

And then Chuck C. says something I adore. He says,

“The gift of God was made at the foundation of the earth. When I was sitting in that chair, in that moment, with everything gone, at the blackest moment of my life, the universe was mine. God was mine…I had to discover that. And being an Alcoholic, I had to discover it in my own way and my own time…He’s a gentleman, God is. He doesn’t intrude where he’s not wanted.”

Our work is to stay sober and do the work of the spirit, whatever that may be for you. It may be a religious presence of god in your life, or it may just be the energy of all that is around you pouring into you. I call that flow. And when I’m trying to wrestle satisfaction from life (something I’m almost always doing, unless I’m consciously focussed on NOT doing it) I am not in flow. Flow for me is one of those brilliant places. I don’t yet know exactly how to get there…but I know EXACTLY when I am there, because my heart is at peace and my skin is literally alive with goosebumps and I can feel that everything is magically as it is supposed to be in each moment.

I was going to go to yoga (at 6:37 a.m. this morning) and then I wasn’t going to go (by 7:04 a.m., as I frantically tried to find a reasonably clean pair of yoga pants.) By 7:13, it was on again, as I threw an old tank top on under an older t-shirt and tried to swoop up my day in my arms before hitting the road to drop the kids at school. It was hot yoga from 7-8:30, coffee with friend to celebrate her 40th birthday, lunch meeting at noon across town, then back to Lakeway for 3 shopping returns, 2 errands and a bathroom break. That was BEFORE picking up my kids, who got in the car screaming at each other and immediately started in with, we’re hungry, we’re thirsty, we want you to drop everything and pay attention to us right now.

Due to a fiercely intense yoga class (and my inability to get my shit together before I leave the house in the morning) I spent the entire day in a damp t-shirt that never dried, smelling my own sweat…but what the heck…it rained all day, so I would have stayed soaked anyway. I can only imagine what my lunch meeting thought as I walked in, frazzled, hair out to next year, after hoofing 3 blocks (due to horrific holiday parking) in the pouring rain.

After picking up the children and assuring them that a box labeled “5th Avenue” doesn’t guarantee a gift from the American Girl store in New York, more errands. And then home..where I assisted in cleaning a guinea pig cage, changing the cat liter box, washing a sink full of dishes, answering 17 student emails, making at least 6 separate snacks and meals over the course of 4 hours, vacuuming the entire house and hand-washing two filthy guinea pigs that were squealing and trying to get away from me the entire time. Oh, and let’s not forget the washing machine–I don’t even bother counting laundry as a chore anymore. It’s just kind of what I do–you know, when my eyes are open.

What’s the point? I don’t know. I don’t really have one. Nothing spiritual comes to mind at the moment. The world seems full of madness. So many people coming and going as if they exist alone, in some centrifugal spiral. You know what that means? Centrifugal force (from the Latin, centrum, meaning “center” and fugere, meaning, “to flee,”)represents the effects of inertia (non-movement) as it arises in connection with rotation. Fleeing the center! I sort of picture Frozone, suspended in mid-air and waiting for rescue.

But I’m no superhero. Quite the opposite. The home room mother of 1st grade (I think I’ve written about her before on this blog), now she’s a force to be reckoned with! One of the women who came to the birthday coffee party this morning–she made HANDMADE truffles, in a pink baker’s box. They had personalized little tags in them that said things like: 40 & Fabulous. They were white frosted with pink stripes. Some had glitter. Jesus.

I want to make fun of the home room mom. A year ago, six months ago, yesterday, I would have. But today I realized that they have something I want a little more of. They have this immaculate attention to detail. My husband has it as well. First semester at the University of Texas, Austin…full-time student, dad, husband, sober, running two small businesses and remodeling a kitchen–straight As! Who can do that?

I’m feeling not enough today. Like I wish I was a little more…capable, important, together, presentable (the sweaty yoga t-shirt…that was really bad!) But I am what I am. And I have to love that today I left my house at 7:17 a.m. and I stayed out all day, keeping my commitments, showing up (in spite of how I looked) and hooking into the good stuff in life–my friends, and my family, and my well-being. There was a time in my life when I couldn’t get out of the closet. And I never forget that that’s where I come from. My perfectionism will be the death of me. It’s a defect. And sooner or later it will eat my lunch.

Some days, the best you can hope for is midnight, and an uninterrupted night’s sleep.